(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image transmission system for transmitting image data obtained by a scanner or the like to a device to which the transmission device is connected via a network, also relates to an image transmission device for use in the system, an image transmission method, and a recording medium in which a program for causing a computer to execute the image transmission method is recorded.
(2) Description of the Related Art
Along with the recent development of communication infrastructure, various protocols have been provided for use in transmitting image data to destinations via a network, and various formats of image data for transmission have been provided (hereinafter, all of the methods and formats for use in transmitting image data to destinations, including such protocols and image data formats, are generically referred to as “transmission conditions”).
Under these circumstances, when a transmitter attempts to transmit image data to a destination, the transmitter needs to set transmission conditions by selecting appropriate ones from among a plurality of options.
Among technologies for allowing the transmitter to select transmission conditions, for example, Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2005-12414 discloses a technology for allowing the transmitter to select appropriate transmission conditions from among a list of transmission conditions that have been preliminarily registered with an image transmission device with respect to the destination.
This technology enables the transmitter to select transmission conditions easily and speedily, when the transmitter attempts to transmit image data to a destination using the image transmission device.
However, this conventional technology has a problem that the image data may be transmitted under transmission conditions that do not match the needs of the receiver side because the transmission conditions with respect to the receiver (destination) are determined by the transmitter side.
For example, the receiver may be on a business trip and temporarily in an office that is not his/her home office, and there is no transmission condition that specifies the office on his/her business trip as the destination, among the transmission conditions (in this case, communication protocol, address and the like) registered with the image transmission device of the transmitter. In such a case, the receiver cannot receive image data from the transmitter while he/she is on the business trip, and both the transmitter who attempted to send the image data and the image data itself may be very important to him/her. This is an inconvenience to the receiver. On the other hand, the receiver may have some transmitters from whom the receiver need not receive image data while he/she is on a business trip.